


if i'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too

by sagittariusmoon



Category: The Poppy War - R. F. Kuang
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers for Book 3: The Burning God
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28403385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagittariusmoon/pseuds/sagittariusmoon
Summary: While waiting for the next life, they try to make sense of each other and a life of no good choices.
Relationships: Fang Runin/Yin Nezha
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	if i'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too

**Author's Note:**

> the burning god hurt me really bad so this is my way of coping :,) enjoy

They meet again in the in-between, the realm of the waiting. Venka is first. Kitay and Rin come together. 

“I didn’t betray you,” she tells Rin. 

Rin nods. “I know.”

They say other things. “I’m sorry” is not among them. But Venka can sense something close to it in the way Rin sometimes grabs her hand and grips it like she never wants to let go. 

It’s fine. Rin wasn’t apologetic in life. Venka doesn’t expect her to be now. 

The darkness is unsettling, too full of Rin’s sorrow and Kitay’s regret and Venka’s anger. So they walk most often in the realm of the living, unseen by its inhabitants. They watch Nezha achieve everything he destroyed them for. He travels Nikan to distribute food and relief teams and to build his darling democracy. In turn, the Hesperians strip his body and the country of their integrity. They build churches and bring their wealthy and make the Nikara believe their culture is primitive, outdated, inferior.

Venka sees Kitay’s heartbreak in his eyes. Rin seems determined not to care. Venka joins her in the effort but finds her chest aches with anger when she sees the way rich Hesperian men sneer at young Nikara girls.

When she was alive, it was easy to forget Rin’s crimes. War and hunger and fantasies of revenge occupied her mind most of the time. But in the in-between, there is little to distract her from it. It doesn’t fill her with righteous anger, the way she knows it does to Kitay. Venka would have done it if she was the goddess instead. She’s killed plenty of people herself. Who is she to judge?

They never leave Nezha behind. Rin can’t stay away, Kitay will follow Rin wherever she goes, and Venka… Venka wants to hold on to them. Nezha walks the beach in Arlong often. Rin musses his hair and pokes at his limbs. Her teasing smile is pretty, almost girlish in the soft light of the stars. Sometimes, Venka can’t wrap her mind around this Rin and General Fang being one and the same. Other times, she understands perfectly. 

More often than not, she and Kitay leave before Rin does, leaving her to sit beside Nezha and feel whatever it is she felt for him - Venka always had a pretty good guess, but she isn’t naive enough to think she fully understands them. 

There are no threats beyond their own emotions here, so they fall into the mindset they had when they were children on the same side. The hurt looms over them, but the camaraderie keeps it at bay. Death has proven to be deceptively kind that way. But for the time being, Kitay holds Rin’s hand, Rin slings her arm around Venka, and they walk together, in Khurdalain, in Arlong, in Sinegard. They try not to think about how they need to forgive. 

Time is a strange thing in the realm of the waiting. It seems that the three of them have years to reminisce about childhood and Sinegard and trust. But simultaneously, it seems no time has passed at all when Nezha joins them. 

He is just bordering on middle-aged when he dies. His body, once fit and healthy, is beaten down by Hesperian testing and the stress of rebuilding a broken nation. But when he joins them in the realm of the waiting, he looks twenty-one again, young and beautiful, even with the scars.

Kitay thinks it’s to balance them. So that they are equals when they go on to whatever is next for them, together.

Venka thinks it’s because Nezha died when he plunged that blade into Rin’s heart. 

The four of them go to the rooftop in Arlong where they once celebrated victory and got drunk on wine and youth and hope. 

“This is the last place I was happy,” she says, partly joking, partly sad, partly trying to alleviate some of the gods-awful tension between Nezha and Rin.

Kitay smiles. “When you were drunk out of your mind?”

Venka snickers. Silence falls. 

Nezha breaks it. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Kitay declares, like he’s been waiting years to say it. 

Venka was never as big a player as the three of them. They were the heroes, the gods, the monsters. She is a footnote in their legend. But still, she wishes things had been different. 

“I’m sorry.”

They understand her. She knows they do.

They look to Rin, whose jaw clenches and unclenches. 

“My crimes were worse than yours,” she says, tone level, “and I’m not sorry for any of it. I would make the same choices if I had to do it all over again.”

Kitay looks stricken. Venka can sense his silent pleading (please just be sorry, Rin, please regret being a monster, please) but she knows it doesn’t matter. 

Rin takes a shaking breath. “But… I wanted us to be together. So I regret that we weren’t.” She looks straight ahead, clearly determined not to look at any of them.

Kitay seems to accept this as the closest thing to an apology that Rin will give. His eyes are still full of devotion. Venka wonders what must it be like to have someone as brilliant as Chen Kitay be so fiercely loyal to you.

Rin finally meets Venka’s gaze. I understand you, Venka tries to say with her expression. Rin seems to get it. 

They stay in Arlong, arms around torsos, pinkies linked, heads on shoulders. The weight of the past lingers, slightly lessened by apologies and almost-forgiveness. They grieve. They remember. They breathe each other in. They watch the stars cross the sky. 

***

Nezha knows they’re going soon. He can feel it, a slight tug back toward the realm of the living. He hopes the four of them will be together in their next life, so they can do it all properly. He supposes he won’t know even if they are together, not until he returns to the darkness.

Their fates are intertwined, of this he’s sure. Nezha has a feeling they’ll keep going through the cycle until there is peace between them. He glances at Rin. She will likely be the last obstacle before that. His heart hurts to think of her like that, again, after all that sacrifice. 

No. This will be different. It has to be. He can’t betray her again.

He loves her. He never stopped. 

When he was alone to raise Nikan from the ashes Rin left behind, he learned to negotiate. Ultimatums and severity became useless and foolish. And so loving Rin, fearing Rin, hating Rin - they could all exist at the same time. The feelings did not diminish each other, they simply were. 

*** 

They travel a lot. 

It’s partly to get away from that overwhelming darkness, where every emotion and truth is laid bare. It’s partly to appreciate Nikan in a way they couldn’t during their short lives. 

They go to the ruins of Sinegard Academy. Kitay knows where Rin wants to go: straight to the Lore garden, which is in startlingly good condition, if a bit dry and overgrown in some places. Rin cries there, sinking to the ground to tear at the grass and the memories of men who left her, who hurt her. 

Kitay holds her tightly. He wishes she wouldn’t have to hurt, wishes that life had been kinder to Rin. 

Rationally, he should be disturbed. A human manifestation of destruction and rage, a person responsible for genocide, cries in his arms. 

But Kitay doesn’t believe Rin is her worst crimes. She’s his soulmate, a girl too young for the legacy and responsibilities forced on her, who grieves people she trusted, people that let her down in the most traumatizing ways.

Kitay doesn’t forgive her for the things she did. He’s reminded of this when they go to Mugen (without Rin) and he lays eyes on charred corpses and hazy, toxic air. 

But he will never stop loving her. He will stay by her side in every life he can.

***

The end - or the beginning, really - is coming soon. Nezha takes Rin to the docks of Khurdalain, the place they were allied soldiers for the first time. Where they were friends before the complexities of civil war and looming betrayal.

They sit at the end of the dock, feet dangling over the water. 

“What is it like, now? Without the phoenix?” 

Rin considers for a moment. “It doesn’t hurt like it did when I was alive. But it’s not peaceful either. I feel like a part of me is missing.”

Nezha nods, thoughts of golden shackles and bruised wrists flashing through his mind. He thinks he might understand.

“We’re going back soon.”

Rin’s mouth twists into a little bitter smile that made his heart flutter back when he was twenty. If he’s honest, it still does. “I feel it.”

“Are you afraid?” he asks cautiously. He hopes she won’t shut him down like she did when he tried being vulnerable before, a million years ago on a warship headed for Lake Boyang. 

She turns to face him, expression hard. “I haven’t changed just because I’m dead, Nezha. Don’t ask me for things I can’t give.”

His heart cracks a little. Rin, Rin, Rin, the great, terrible love of his life. 

“Did you ever feel the same?” he asks after a stretch of silence, not daring to look at her.

Rin’s voice has softened a little when she answers, “You know I did.”

“It should have been different,” Nezha insists. “We should have…” He trails off. She knows. He’s said it all before. 

Rin says nothing. She reaches out for his hand without looking at him. He intertwines their fingers. 

“We’ll meet in the next life, Nezha. I know it.”

He believes her.

Kitay and Venka come to get them when the tug back to the realm of the living becomes strong enough that they all know it’s time. They leave Khurdalain behind for darkness and truth. 

There is no hiding in the darkness. Hurt, anger, regret, longing, sadness - Nezha can feel it in all of them. There is so much pain between them, so much that is unforgivable. 

And yet. 

There is love. Desperate, defiant love despite the betrayal and the choices made by forced hands. To Nezha, it feels a bit like grace. 

When they join hands for the last time, Nezha does his best to take in the three of them. His greatest friends and greatest enemies and greatest loves.

“We’ll see each other again,” Kitay promises. 

They fade away. Nezha lets them go. 

Before the light reclaims him, he prays that in this life, he’ll be on their side.


End file.
